eliminate writeln et comp?

[Fawzi Mohamed]

On 2009-03-20 13:28:06 +0100, Don <nospam at nospam.com> said:

> Robert Jacques wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:23:44 -0400, Don <nospam at nospam.com> wrote:
>>> I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution 
>>> is unacceptable for a standard library. But...
>>> Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't 
>>> understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
>>> Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice 
>>> that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's 
>>> reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free > License;"
>>> But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it 
>>> include the zlib license? I presume not.

I read more carefully and tried to understand it better,  I had not 
understood the problem that makes it incompatible with GPL, the thing 
is that it puts extra restrictions that limit the responsibility of the 
licenser, in particular has provisions for revoking the patent granted 
to the licensee should he choose to make a patent claim about the 
original work.

Which is reasonable, but an extra restriction, and thus incompatible with GPL

>>> In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If 
>>> that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.
>>> Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.
>> 
>> No, sadly you're right. According to wikipedia, the AFL is not GPL 
>> compatible. If AFL could be converted to zlib then you could convert 
>> ALF source to zlib and it would then be GPL compatible. Q.E.D. Hence, 
>> ALF can not be convert to zlib.
>> 
>> So far the only other licence I saw without the binary-licence 
>> distribution problem is the Boost Software License (BSL1.0) (And of 
>> course the WTFYW licence) And I'm guessing this issue is why they wrote 
>> a new licence instead of reusing an old one.
> 
> The zlib license also doesn't have the binary distribution problem.
> The Boost license looks pretty good to me, and they seem to have used 
> better legal consultation than the zlib license. I also like the fact 
> that it only occupies 3 lines of source code -- that's much better than 
> zlib.
> 
> Boost, zlib, WTFYW, and public domain, seem to be the only ones which 
> are suitable for a standard library.

I agree that these a good licenses for a standard library.